1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image transmission device provided with a function for transmitting an image obtained, for example, by reading an original document by a scanner to other internet facsimile terminal via a network in a predetermined internet facsimile system and a function for transmitting an electronic mail attached with the image to an arbitrary terminal such as other computer terminal or the like via a network despite an Internet facsimile system and its informing method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a method for communicating an image to a remote place, a digital complex machine is popular by the use of a PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) and an ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network). In the first instance, this kind of digital complex machine can be easily operated and secondary, this kind of digital complex machine can inform a message even if a party is absent. Therefore, this kind of digital complex machine is widely distributed not only in a business field but also in a household.
A communication standard of a facsimile by the use of the PSTN and the ISDN is recommended as a standard of a G3 facsimile and a G4 facsimile.
A first advantage of such a conventional facsimile is to enable the data to be transferred at the highest communication speed allowable by a bandwidth of a communication line by securing a communication line with respect to a facsimile directly at a receiving side. A second advantage thereof is to enable to check that the data has been certainly transmitted by directly communicating with a party. Further, a third advantage of such a conventional facsimile is to enable to transmit the data certainly in order to perform a capacity negotiation to check whether a transmission data system is allowable at the receiving side or not.
On the other hand, as the Internet has been generalized, a service to use Internet in place of a conventional circuit exchange network has been popular.
Particularly, when the transmission distance and the data amount are large, it is possible to keep a communication cost lower by transmitting the data via Internet. Therefore, an Internet digital complex machine provided with a function to transmit and receive the image via the Internet in addition to a function owned by a normal digital complex machine has appeared.
This kind of Internet digital complex machine generally transmits the image data as an attached file of the electronic mail through the Internet. Therefore, the image data is transferred without connection. Accordingly, a negotiation performed by the G3 facsimile and the G4 facsimile is not performed and a communication form is taken such that a transmission side unilaterally transmits the image.
As described above, the Internet facsimile transfers the image by the use of the electronic mail. Accordingly, even when a terminal of a transmission destination is not an Internet facsimile terminal, it is possible for a terminal of a computer such as a personal computer or the like to receive the image transfer if this computer terminal has a function to receive the electronic mail.
However, an image file format to be used for the Internet facsimile is not popular for a computer terminal, so that it is difficult for the computer terminal to process the image file format properly.
Therefore, in order to transfer the image to the computer terminal, it is considered that a function to convert the image data into a file format, for example, a PDF (Portable Document Format) or the like, which is standard for the computer terminal, is provided and such a file format for a computer and a file format for the Internet facsimile are selectively used. However, a user should designate which file format should be used, so that this involves a problem such that a normal image communication is not performed if the user's designation of the file format is wrong.